


Life is an extended goodbye

by HeavensArcher



Series: Jaegercon Bingo [10]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 17:18:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeavensArcher/pseuds/HeavensArcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"goodbye" fill. Tendo's life at this stage felt like one long goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life is an extended goodbye

Tendo Choi had said quite a few goodbyes over the course of his life so far. Some of them had felt better than others.

When he was 10, he’d cried as he murmured goodbyes over the caskets of his parents, their lives taken in the same car accident that barely left him with a sprained wrist. His grandfather and grandmother stood either side of him, silent yet comforting presences at his side as they privately murmured their own goodbyes to their daughter and son in law.

When Tendo was the tender age of 15, his grandmother, the strong, unyielding force that hid a low tolerance for mucking around beneath a typical smiling exterior, seemed to age 30 years in mere months as sickness after sickness attacked her body until she couldn’t fight them off anymore. Tendo held her hand in the hospital as he murmured his goodbyes and pressed a kiss to her wrinkled cheek as the heart monitor finally flatlined.

When he was 17, he finally said goodbye to the group of friends that had led him to stealing and vandalism with the words of the judge in his mind ( _You’re a bright young man, kid, and I really don’t want to have to put you into juvenile detention. I’ll let you off with a warning this time. I hope you do something your parents would have been proud of._ )  He didn’t feel as bad after this goodbye. It felt freeing as he walked away from their jeering words with a smile on his lips.

At 21, the world let out a collective sigh after the monster finally fell. He and his coworkers helped people onto the ferry and away from the city. He had run in for his last remaining family and they had made it out in time…only to be poisoned by the Kaiju Blue. Even the blood of that fucking thing was toxic. He clutched Yeye’s hand like he was 10 years old and cried as he begged him to not go. Yeye smiled gently  and murmured, “Endure this.”

Tendo wasn’t sure he could.

It took three years of living in limbo before he finally got his act together and signed up to the PPDC academy. Not to be a pilot, fuck that, but to be the person in the pilot’s ear. He wanted to be the one telling them what was coming. He graduates with flying colours and says goodbye to his instructors with a grin as he clutches his certificate and reads his assignment orders. He throws himself into his role. He gets the promotion to J-Tech Chief and LOCCENT officer in record time and he’s doing what he wanted to do from the start. He was the eyes, the ears, the comforting voice that kept the pilots grounded and the first to greet them when they were out of their giant mecha.

He works with the Becket brothers and it feels like he has a family again. They laugh and joke and mourn those who lose to the beasts that keep coming and every time the klaxons blare, it’s Tendo in their ear as they walk out into the ocean to face another beast of nightmares that Tendo throws a name onto as it comes to him. It’s Tendo that eagerly awaits them getting home safely, Tendo constantly worrying until he sees them both physically in front of them and Raleigh throws his arm around his shoulder and Yancy walks beside them, bumping shoulders as Yancy whispers, “You’re gonna go grey early, all this worrying.”

He’s 28 when he loses one of his little brothers. All he can hear is screaming and the screens flash red as the conn pod is compromised and suddenly the neural handshake is gonebroken _nonopleasenotthem_. It’s all he can do to get his second in command to step in and take over as he pushes away from his desk and runs out of the base into the blistering cold outside. It yanks him out of the black panic that was creeping in but feels like it freezes the tears on his cheeks, like they’ll stay there for eternity.

The marshall finds him out there a few hours later, he murmured they found Raleigh on a beach. He’d piloted Gipsy back to the shore himself and he looks like he’ll pull through.

Tendo is there when Raleigh wakes the first time. He wakes screaming, screaming Yancy’s name as the medical staff try to keep him still to prevent him ripping anything open. They sedate him quickly and he twitches as he falls back into unconsciousness. Tendo knows then he didn’t just lose Yancy. That even though the rest of the Shatterdome doesn’t recognise it, they lost Raleigh that day too. Part of him flew straight out after Yancy and it wasn’t coming back. He wasn’t coming back.

He watched from the bay door as Raleigh trekked away into the Alaskan air without even looking back. He blinked quickly before turning and moving back inside.

The whispered “goodbye” was lost to the wind.


End file.
